Edgar QuinetQuotations

Today as in the time of Pliny and Columella, the hyacinth flourishes in Wales, the periwinkle in Illyria, the daisy on the ruins of Numantia; while around them cities have changed their masters and their names, collided and smashed, disappeared into nothingness, their peaceful generations have crossed down the ages as fresh and smiling as on the days of battle.

The law of humanity ought to be composed of the past, the present, and the future, that we bear within us; whoever possesses but one of these terms, has but a fragment of the law of the moral world.

I mistrust the satisfaction which makes a display of the possession of Infinity; that is called fatuity in philosophic terms.

What are all political and social institutions, but always a religion, which in realizing itself, becomes incarnate in the world?

Universal orthodoxy is enriched by every new discovery of truth: what at first appeared universal, by wishing to stand still, sooner or later becomes a sect.

It is certain that if you would have the whole secret of a people, you must enter into the intimacy of their religion.

Science is Christian, not when it condemns itself to the letter of things, but when, in the infinitely little, it discovers as many mysteries and as much depth and power as in the infinitely great.